May 25, 2012

May 2012

Earline, who usually follows us remotely on the web, was
able to join us live and in person!
Great time comparing and sharing tales of our book groups. We hope we can do a book club
“exchange” as it were, perhaps by going to the Virginia Festival of the Book in her neck of the woods.

M. C.
Beaton, Agatha Raisin
and the Terrible Tourist (1997). With unrealistic thoughts of
salvaging her broken engagement, Agatha leaves her peaceful Cotswold village
for a tour of Cyprus, where she hopes to find her former fiancée and regain his
affection. Instead, she finds
dreadful co-travelers, political intrigue, mysteries and murder.

Alexander McCall Smith, The Unbearable Lightness of
Scones (2008). For the most part, the characters of the 44 Scotland Street
series are either self-aware but powerless or delusional and manipulative. 8-year-old Bertie is the prime example
of the former and his dreadful mother Irene of the latter. Art gallery owner Matthew has married
his Elspeth, Angus Lord discovers a missing portrait masterpiece, his dog Cyril
becomes a father, narcissistic Bruce loses his fiancée of the gangster-wealthy
father, and Big Lou of the neighborhood cafe escapes yet another unsuitable
suitor.

Fern Michaels, The Scoop (2009). This is the fourth
novel in the Godmother series. The
novel opens in Charleston, South Carolina, where mega-wealthy Toots Loudenberry
is burring husband number 8 with appropriate fanfare but negligible
sorrow. When she learns that the
fourth-rate gossip paper her daughter Abby works for in Hollywood is on the
brink of collapse, she gathers her friends Sophie, Mavis and Ida, the
Godmothers, and off they go to Hollywood on a secret mission to save the paper
and turn it into a rousing success without Abby finding out. Just desserts are
dispensed all ‘round.

Julia Glass, The Whole World Over (2006).
Like Three Junes, this
novel interweaves the stories of several intriguing characters. Greenie
Duquette runs a successful commercial bakery in Greenwich Village. Her friend and client Walter, a
successful restaurant owner, serves the visiting governor of New Mexico a piece
Greenie’s coconut cake. Greenie’s
husband Alan has become remote and occasionally abusive in some sort of midlife
crisis and when the governor offers Greenie a job as his personal chef, she
relocates to New Mexico with her son George. One rainy day lonely Alan befriends a strange and ill-kempt
young woman with a box full of puppies and the improbable name of Saga. Saga lives in Connecticut with her
uncle, a retired professor, but journeys into the City regularly by train. She ends up dusting shelves and
gardening for Fenno (of Three Junes)
at his bookstore. All these
characters and plus the entire vibrantly colorful New Mexico contingent more
are essential to the resolution of the seemingly unrelated threads of the
plot. This is a highly satisfying
novel.

Belva Plain, Blessings
(1989). Jenny Rakowsky is
engaged to Jay Wolfe. She is a
lawyer with a shabby office in New York City where she represents the poor and
downtrodden, especially women. He
is partner in a corporate law firm, on Madison Avenue. On a weekend visit to
Jay’s parents in Connecticut, Jenny agrees to take on an environmental case
involving a local wetland wilderness.
Just as everything is going so well, Jenny’s past intrudes in a frightening
manner.

Joyce Carol Oates, Man Crazy (1997). The narrator
Ingrid Boone introduces herself from the psychiatric ward of the County Women’s
Detention Center. But for this, we
would not expect her to survive the painful years of her childhood in upstate
New York in the 1970s. She is an
only child who moves from place to place as her mother evades her father, a
notorious wanted man. Her
mother supports them with a series of low-paid jobs and the favors of men
attracted by her beauty. Ingrid’s
insecurity and sense of inadequacy are devastating. This is quite a dark tale which nevertheless holds the
reader’s interest by slowly unraveling the threads of a series of mysteries.

David Baldacci, First Family (2009). Former Secrete
Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are asked by the First Lady to
investigate the abduction of her niece, even though the Secret Service and the
FBI are on the case. The
inter-agency rivalry is quelled only by their common resistance to cooperating
with the “outsiders”. Sean
and Michelle are committed to finding the missing child, but they cannot be
satisfied until they achieve justice as well. As with other Baldacci novels, the bureaucracy is
self-serving, the plot is intricate, and the pace is fast.

From Dwight in FL:

I'm still reading with many mixed emotions and pleasures
HEMINGWAY'S BOAT by Paul Hendrickson. Bobbing along behind PILAR on a
trip to Bimini from Key West was a 13' sea skiff, a LYMAN! A Bernard
Lyman is mentioned, building boats since 1875 and the exclusive lapstrake
construction takes up a paragraph.